Blizzard Entertainment's Rob Pardo revealed the planned features for Battle.net 2.0, which will launch in 2010 with StarCraft II and be incorporated into World of WarCraft. The biggest change is the introduction of what Blizzard is calling "Real ID" that should eliminate "smurfing" accounts and ensure better matchmaking. Games will be tied to a specific account much like Steam or other digital distribution services. Battle.net 2.0 will be free, however.

Pardo believes that the new matchmaking system is more powerful than Microsoft's TrueSkill and when paired with Real ID, it should help players of all skill levels get into games that they have a chance to win. On this point, the ladder system has been improved to take player skill into account. After a player completes around 10 games, they will be placed into a skill tier. Within each skill tier, the player is matched up with 99 other players in 100 player divisions. The focus of the season is on competing with these 99 other players with tournaments taking place at the end of each season between division leaders.

As a dashboard, Battle.net 2.0 is always on and will allow for cross-game/cross-realm chat and players will be able to see which friends are online while in singleplayer. There aren't any groundbreaking features here, but it brings Battle.net up to Steam's level and will help World of WarCraft players transition into StarCraft II.

StarCraft II will also support a Marketplace, which will not be available at launch, but added later. This is where custom map makers can offer up their maps for free or for a small fee, taking in part of the revenue. Pardo compared it to Apple's iPhone App Store. Custom maps can also be published to the server so players can see what is available, comment and rate them, and download them without having to join games. Custom games can also be filtered so you can find custom maps that aren't DotA.